Positives and negatives: Fulham 0-2 Crystal Palace

In form and flirting with Europe, Crystal Palace at home was set to be the perfect opportunity to prove our worth, with some more optimistic fans counting the points between us and the Champions League spots. But once again, we’ve failed to perform when in touching distance of those dizzy heights, and we continue our remarkably poor home record in the Premier League against Palace. Our last Craven Cottage victory against the Eagles came on 1 January 2005.

Positives

Raised expectations

Trying to draw positives out of that performance is like drawing blood from a stone, but our collective feelings of disappointment and frustration emphasise just how successful this season has been, and how we have elevated our expectations.

Let’s not forget it wasn’t so long ago that Brede Hangeland was running up mountains with cheese strapped to his kneecaps courtesy of Felix Magath. It wasn’t so long ago that Tony Khan suggested that we Fulham fans would love to be considered a yo-yo club as we bounced back and forth from the Premier League to the Championship like a deluded frog.

In those darker times we would have shrugged this performance off as “just one of those days” that happens more often than we would have liked. But now we’re chasing Europe, or at least having a strong battle for top 10. The top 11 clubs are ferociously good this season and that doesn’t even include the likes of Spurs and Manchester United. We’re in good company and we’re achieving great things – let’s stay grounded as the Whites hunt down Wolves on Tuesday night.

A couple of respectable performances

While it feels easy to rip into the whole Fulham team like Jean-Philippe Mateta did on numerous occasions, a small handful of players deserve some credit for their work rate in the match and overall stats that can sometimes go under the radar. Sasa Lukic did his utmost to disrupt the Palace play with 12 defensive actions, eight crosses into the box and a fairly solid passing accuracy as we’ve come to expect from the Serbian. He was certainly the brighter light out of the two deeper central midfielders.

Bernd Leno was fairly solid overall too, the first goal bundling in from our own defender, and the second so powerful it seemed to have no time from the moment it left Daniel Munoz’s boot to smashing the back of the net. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t his finest hour, and you can question whether he should have covered the angle of which that second goal was scored, but you have to feel like the defence let him down big time as he was over exposed on numerous occasions and he did produce a couple of solid saves from long and close range which included a dangerous header from Maxence Lacroix.

Negatives

More pointless possession

Despite Fulham having the ball for 62% of yesterday’s game, it certainly didn’t feel like it as Palace drove forward with much more purpose, control and identity. The eye-watering 10 shots on goal with none on target left Fulham fan’s heads plundered into their hands as it was a tough one to watch. Andersen’s spank from outside the box when in space would make a rugby player jubilantly celebrate a fantastic conversation. Raul Jiminez’s soft attempt at knocking on a lofted cross in the 93rd minute with his head and missing it completely, sums up just how off the mark we were, and that’s just in the attacking sense. It’s an all too familiar story at Craven Cottage this season as we’ve only picked up seven points in our last seven outings at home, seriously struggling and consistently dropping points to teams below us in the table. Football is a funny old game isn’t it?

Flat-footed defending

In the battle of who got the better deal in the Joachim Andersen transfer, today Eagles fans will be laughing. The centre-back has been excellent in possession for us this season with the addition of his trademark diagonal ball, but there have been question marks arising in relation to his pace with the occasional injury, as we often see rash tackles and aggressive positioning that leaves us exposed without enough ability to recover. Yesterday he inadvertently opened the scoring for his former club as he was bullied during a set-piece; questionable foul, but not really enough strength shown in the moment either.

His counterpart Calvin Bassey was completely fooled by Munoz for the second goal, as he committed to the standing tackle on the attackers left-hand side and was sold like a kipper in a fish market. The space that opened up from this was painful and the striker was able to use the extra time to generate enough rocket-like power to smash it past Leno. This wasn’t the first time either as an excellent passage of play by Palace in the opening stages of the match saw a looped ball find Mateta exploding into acres of space. Bassey was left chasing shadows and thankfully the strike hit the side netting, but on another day it could have been game over from the get-go.

Issa Diop will be champing at the bit after this display. Diop, who has had an exceptionally good season in terms of defensive output, will make a very good case for himself to start on Tuesday with the tight turnaround time. I understand the free flowing football Andersen and Bassey can produce in possession which is a core part of our game plan, but perhaps Diop would have been a more solid option instead of Andersen on Saturday.

Unfulfilled potential

Although earlier I mentioned grounding ourselves and how our expectations as fans have risen, you can’t ignore the fact that we are consistently missing key opportunities. Every time we flirt with Europe in eighth place after unexpected results, we’re faced with what should be a winnable, and we fall at that hurdle every time. Draws at home to Ipswich and Southampton, defeats to Wolves and Palace just don’t make sense, other than the idea that we don’t have a plan B and don’t know how to break down teams with a low block, and were completely caught off-guard by Palace’s aggressive press and high line yesterday.

And speaking of not fulfilling expectations, Emile Smith Rowe has been painfully underwhelming this season, and Andersen hasn’t justified his price tag either. The club has invested £62m in purchasing these two key players, but you have to ask whether they were the wisest deals in football for a club of our size. Time will tell, but I think we’re beginning to get an idea of exactly what we’re working with here.

It’s important to remember that Palace have turned around their dismal start to their Premier League campaign this season, after putting to bed the opening run of eight games without a win, they are very much a side on the up.

Oliver Glasner is a great manager and tactically won that match against Silva. Despite pretty poor officiating in the first half, I’m reluctant to use that as an excuse. At the end of the day, the better side won, and sometimes that can be quite reassuring to accept and move on to the next game which thankfully isn’t far away with Molineux just around the corner. Will we be fed to the dogs, or can we keep the embers of those optimistic Fulham fans burning bright? Come on you Whites.

Oh, and Fulham social gurus: stop using the crying face emoji in your highlight reels, please.